(a film directed by his uncle Carol Reed that won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Picture), Gerald in Women in Love (1969), the title role in Hannibal Brooks (1969), Urbain Grandier in The Devils (1971), Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), Uncle Frank in Tommy (1975), Dr. Hal Raglan in The Brood (1979), Dolly Hopkins in Funny Bones (1995) and Antonius Proximo in Gladiator (2000).

It did not seem to help his career immediately: He was not credited in the films The Captain's Table (1959), Upstairs and Downstairs (1959), directed by Ralph Thomas, Life Is a Circus (1960), The Angry Silence (1960), The League of Gentlemen (1960) or Beat Girl (1960).

Onscreen, they made British cinema sexy in classic films including Lawrence of Arabia, Oliver!, Becket and This Sporting Life."

(1968), alongside Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Mark Lester, Jack Wild and Harry Secombe, in his uncle Carol Reed's screen version of the successful stage musical.

[20] He was in the black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969) with Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, directed by Basil Dearden;[21] and a war film for Winner, Hannibal Brooks (1969).

[24] Take a Girl Like You (1970) was a sex comedy with Hayley Mills based on a novel by Kingsley Amis;[25] The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970) was a thriller directed by Anatole Litvak.

After Reed's death, the Guardian Unlimited called the casting decision, "One of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history.

"[29] He made a series of action-oriented projects: The Hunting Party (1971), a Western shot in Spain with Gene Hackman; Sitting Target (1972), a tough gangster film; and Z.P.G.

Reed also appeared in a number of Italian films: Dirty Weekend (1973), with Marcello Mastroianni; One Russian Summer (1973) with Claudia Cardinale; and Revolver (1973) with Fabio Testi.

Reed appeared in The New Spartans (1975), then acted alongside Karen Black, Bette Davis, and Burgess Meredith in the Dan Curtis horror film, Burnt Offerings (1976).

After Assault in Paradise (1977), he returned to swashbuckling in Crossed Swords (UK title The Prince and the Pauper) (1977), as Miles Hendon alongside Raquel Welch and a grown-up Mark Lester, who had worked with Reed in Oliver!, from a script co-written by Fraser.

Reed returned to the horror genre as Dr. Hal Raglan in David Cronenberg's 1979 film The Brood and ended the decade with A Touch of the Sun (1979), a comedy with Peter Cushing.

Hype (1980) and played Gen. Rodolfo Graziani in Lion of the Desert (1981), which co-starred Anthony Quinn and chronicled the Senussids resistance to Italian occupation of Libya.

He says he was contemplating quitting acting when Nicolas Roeg cast him in Castaway (1986) as the middle-aged Gerald Kingsland, who advertises for a "wife" (played by Amanda Donohoe) to live on a desert island with him for a year.

He was in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) (as the god Vulcan); The Lady and the Highwayman (1989) with Hugh Grant; The House of Usher (1989); The Return of the Musketeers (1990) with Lester and Fraser; Treasure Island (1990) with Charlton Heston; A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990); Hired to Kill (1990); Panama Sugar (1990); The Revenger (1990); The Pit and the Pendulum (1991); Prisoner of Honor (1991) for Russell; and Severed Ties (1993).

His final role was the elderly slave dealer Proximo in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), in which he played alongside Richard Harris,[34] an actor whom Reed admired greatly both on and off the screen.

[38] In addition to his posthumous BAFTA recognition, he shared the film's nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture with the rest of the principal players.

In December 1974, Reed appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, a show where the guest, a "castaway", talks about their life and chooses eight favourite songs and the reasons for their choices.

He named "Jardins sous la pluie" by French composer Claude Debussy as his favourite piece of music, and when asked what book and inanimate luxury item he would take with him on a desert island Reed chose Winnie-the-Pooh by A.

According to his brother, subsequent to the attack, when arguing, the burly Reed would bring his hands up in a gesture that was defensive but many men found very intimidating.

In 1993, Reed was unsuccessfully sued by his former stuntman, stand-in and friend Reg Prince, for an alleged spinal injury incurred by the latter while on location for the filming of Castaway.

[citation needed] When the 1970s UK government raised taxes on personal income, Reed initially declined to join the exodus of major British film stars to Hollywood and other more tax-friendly locales.

He had sold his large house, Broome Hall, between the Surrey villages of Coldharbour and Ockley, and initially lodged at the Duke of Normandie Hotel in Saint Peter Port.

Reed subsequently revised the story, claiming he drank 106 pints of beer on a two-day binge before marrying Josephine Burge: "The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey, about 15 years ago; it was highly exaggerated."

In the late 1970s, Steve McQueen told the story that, in 1973, he flew to the UK to discuss a film project with Reed, who suggested that the two of them visit a London nightclub.

Near the end of his life, he was brought onto some television series specifically for his drinking; for example, The Word put bottles of vodka in his dressing room so he could be secretly filmed getting drunk.

[59] In December 1987, Reed, who was overweight and already suffered from gout,[60] became seriously ill with kidney problems as a result of his alcoholism, and had to abstain from drinking for over a year, on the advice of his doctor.

Due to his arriving extremely intoxicated, having already been in trouble for a bar fight, before attempting to "expose himself" to lead actress Geena Davis, he was fired and replaced with British character actor George Murcell.

[61] In his final years, when he lived in Ireland, Reed was a regular in the one-roomed O'Brien's Bar in Churchtown, County Cork, close to the 13th-century cemetery in the heart of the village where he would be buried.

[64][65] According to Gladiator screenwriter David Franzoni, Reed had encountered a group of Royal Navy sailors from HMS Cumberland who were on shore leave at a bar and challenged them to a drinking match.